Audio 3:28
Bradley Manning found not guilty on charge of aiding the enemy

Jane CowanUpdated
Wed Jul 31 08:32:00 EST 2013

US soldier Bradley Manning has been spared a guilty verdict on the most serious charge he faced. He's been found not guilty of aiding the enemy for leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks. But Private Manning was convicted of multiple counts of espionage, which could see him jail for a long long time.

Transcript

TONY EASTLEY: US soldier and whistleblower Bradley Manning has been spared a guilty verdict on the most serious charge he faced but he's been convicted of multiple counts of espionage, which could see him jailed for decades.

North America correspondent Jane Cowan has followed the case from the start and she's at Fort Meade military base in Maryland.

Jane, Bradley Manning's case was of course heard before a judge. What exactly did the judge decide?

JANE COWAN: Well Tony, to listen to this verdict being read out by the military judge Colonel Denise Lind was really to hear the word "guilty" over and over again as she went through the 22 charges that Private Manning was facing.

And she did find him guilty of multiple counts of espionage, but on the most serious charge of aiding the enemy, which is the one that carried a maximum penalty of life behind bars with no chance of parole, she did find him not guilty.

You have to say though it's fairly immaterial for Private Manning's future because the combined maximum sentence on all the other charges that he has been convicted on is more than 100 years so he could still spend the rest of his life in jail.

TONY EASTLEY: We'll come back to the judge's verdict again in a moment but firstly how did Bradley Manning react to the verdict when it was announced?

JANE COWAN: Well Tony, he really showed no emotion. He had seemed quite relaxed when he first came into the court room. He was chatting and sipping from his water bottle.

But as the verdict approached he did grow more subdued. And when it was read out he stood stoically with his arms by his side, his face was pretty inscrutable.

Supporters in the courtroom, there were about 30 of them there and more in an overflow room, they'd been warned that they'd be thrown out if there were any outbursts and they did remain silent throughout. Although outside, afterwards, there were some cheers as the defence lawyer David Coombs emerged.

TONY EASTLEY: Jane Cowan, beyond the obvious consequences for Private Manning, does this case sent a precedent? Already I've been reading that it's "a striking rebuke to military prosecutors".

JANE COWAN: It has been called that. You remember that critics of this case had said that the aiding the enemy charge was always an over-reach. It was a charge that had never been brought before in a leak case.

And you're right; this has been called "a striking rebuke to military prosecutors" who were arguing that simply causing material to be published by the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks was akin to aiding Al Qaeda because terrorists can access the internet.

The government had been relying on a case that dated back to the civil war era to bring the aiding the enemy charge and it had been feared that a guilty verdict would set a dangerous precedent for what aiding the enemy meant in a modern internet age if the publication of something online could be equated with dealing with the enemy.

And civil libertarians had warned that a guilty verdict on that charge would have a chilling effect on the media, kind of threatening to criminalise both journalists and their sources and to deter whistleblowers.

Groups from WikiLeaks to Amnesty International are still unhappy, Tony, and they're saying that it remains a case of misplaced priorities on the part of the US government that the charge was ever brought in the first place and that Private Manning's being so heavily punished on the other charges anyway.